Today in Latin America

Colombian police arrested 11 people allegedly linked to Valdez Villarreal in cities of Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, Buenaventura and Pereira as part of the 18-month long Operation Gulf.

“As a result of intelligence gathering and criminal investigation, the National Police dismantled an international network of drug traffickers linked to the Beltrán Leyva cartel of Mexico and the 30th Front of the FARC in Colombia,” said the National Police of Colombia in a statement, according to BBC Mundo.

Valdez Villarreal, a Texas-born drug trafficker, was allegedly a top enforcer for Mexican drug kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva, until he began feuding with the cartel after Arturo’s death. The battle between Valdez Villarreal and the Beltrán Leyva cartel for control of the business has been blamed for gangland-style executions and the hanging of beheaded corpses in the town of Cuernavaca.

He was arrested Monday by Mexican federal police in the state of Mexico, which borders the capital of Mexico City, after a yearlong intelligence operation.

A 17-year-old suspected by neighbors of having committed a murder was beaten and burned to death Wednesday by a group of people in the south of Guatemala City, according to the local volunteer firefighters’ spokesman.

and manufacturing in the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies, grew faster than forecast, bolstering optimism in global markets.

Southern Cone

Mexico’s captured drug lord Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villareal claimed that he had sheltered the man who shot Paraguayan soccer star SalvadorCabañas in the head for three months. José Jorge Balderas, the prime suspect in the Cabañas shooting, is now at large.